Google's 'X' factor

Monday

Mar 17, 2014 at 12:01 AMMar 17, 2014 at 8:08 AM

In a rare public speech, Google Inc. CEO Larry Page once suggested the tech industry needs "safe places where we can try out new things" without rules or interference. Some people thought he was describing a futuristic fantasy, perhaps a remote desert island where robots roam free.

In a rare public speech, Google Inc. CEO Larry Page once suggested the tech industry needs “safe places where we can try out new things” without rules or interference. Some people thought he was describing a futuristic fantasy, perhaps a remote desert island where robots roam free.

But Page already has the next best thing in Google X, the secretive skunk works where company scientists get plenty of resources and free rein to work on things like self-driving cars, Internet-connected balloons and flying power generators.

“They’re doing a lot of incredibly weird stuff,” said Rob Enderle, analyst at the Enderle Group, “but they’re rolling in money.” Google made $13 billion profit on $60 billion in sales last year, mostly from online ads. “That gives them a lot of latitude in what they invest in.”

The X division is housed in two nondescript office buildings near Google’s main campus, and it’s been compared to “Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory” by the man who runs it on a daily basis. Eric “ Astro” Teller, an entrepreneur and scientist who reports to Google co-founder Sergey Brin, once described his staff as “Peter Pans with Ph.D.s.”

“They understand that their mission is to think really audaciously, to incubate magic,” Teller said last year, adding that X’s goal is to “have an impact on the world and then worry later about making money on it.”

The message is classic Page and Brin. Google’s co-founders built their powerful Internet search engine as grad students and, as they enter middle age, still espouse a passion for ideas that sound like science fiction.

Consider the driverless cars, often seen near Google’s headquarters or zipping up and down Rt. 101. Brin and Page have said they’re convinced that cutting-edge sensors and software can eliminate traffic crashes now caused by human error.

Critics question how that relates to Google’s core business, although some analysts say Google might sell more ads if people spend more time online in their cars.

As head of X, Teller is known as Google’s “captain of moonshots” — a reference to Page’s penchant for ambitious projects that promise big impact.

Driverless cars were the first big project at X: Page and Brin created the division in 2010 as a lab for computer scientist Sebastian Thrun after meeting him at a Pentagon-sponsored robotic-vehicle contest.

Thrun left in 2012 for an online teaching startup, but Page and Brin decided X should explore other ideas that caught their interest, such as wearable computers.

They recruited an electrical-engineering professor, Babak Parviz, who had published research on using lenses to display images. Soon they brought on more engineers, software developers and stylish designers to refine what came to be called Glass.

Despite some external skepticism, Juniper Research estimates sales of “wearables” could reach $19 billion in 2019.

Teller said the project’s biggest challenge is grappling with “what it feels like to be human and what it feels like to interact with technology.”

Other X projects seem less philosophical, but no less ambitious.

There’s the airborne Makani wind turbine — actually, a pair of turbines mounted on a 28-foot wing designed to fly in circles at 1,300 feet, so it can generate electricity and send it by cable to the ground.

Another aerial endeavor is Project Loon, which is exploring whether a network of low-cost, high-altitude balloons carrying radio gear can deliver Internet service to developing countries.

“It’s exciting. We have the license to go and try stuff that really might not work, but if it does, it can change the world in big ways,” Richard DeVaul, the project’s chief technical architect, said last year.